Twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, people in an unassuming
building along Indian Trail Road on the west side of Aurora control the
fate of air travelers across parts of five states.

The airspace
controlled from the Chicago Air Route Traffic Control Center facility is
one of the smaller ones in the FAA system, but is the second busiest due
to its proximity to O’Hare and Midway airports. Air traffic controllers
there handle almost 3 million operations each year, tracking aircraft
and notifying pilots to adjust their aircrafts’ speed, altitude and
following distance to maximize safety and travel times.

The controllers eventually hand off aircraft control to airport towers
or other control centers within the FAA system. They also help
aircraft navigate through or around dangerous weather systems with the
help of in-house meteorologists. The meteorologists feed real-time and
projected weather information to the controllers in contact with all
the pilots within Chicago center’s geographical area.

The facility
also houses training rooms where controllers prepare for the demands
of the job. Pictures showing air traffic control radar screens were
shot in those rooms — even we weren’t allowed inside the control rooms
due to the sensitive nature of the work taking place.